1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to handling small volume fluid samples, such as nanoliter-size fluid samples.
2. Related Art
The ability to handle small volume fluid samples, such as samples in the nanoliter-size range, can be important in biotechnology-related research, such as genomics and proteomics. Small volume sample handling is also used in other pharmaceutical or material science research, such as for drug discovery, live cell dispensing, combinatorial chemistry or other applications.
Systems that perform such sample handling are frequently used to pick up, or aspirate, samples from a work surface, such as wells in a microtiter tray. Microtiter trays are well known in the art, and commonly have 96, 384 or other numbers of wells to hold individual liquid samples. Sample handling systems also are used to place, or dispense, liquid samples in desired positions on a work surface.